As the use of hallucingenic plants becomes more and more widespread, the controversy concerning their potential dangers and possible benefits becomes less and less rational. New-age utopians defend their psychoactive properties on spiritual & aesthetic grounds, while past-age spokesmen condemn them with moral precepts. Hallucinogenic Plants of North America, in presenting the objective data of current scientific research, is one of the first books to attempt to restore the rationality to this ongoing controversy.

This book has been designed both to give the recreational user access to reliable, accurate information on hallucinogenic plants, and to serve as a multi-disciplinary reference source, presenting botanical, chemical, historical, and neuro-pharmacological data for students and laymen alike. Thirty representative hallucinogenic plants, ranging from the rain forests of Puget Sound to the deserts and tropics of Mexico, are described in botanical, chemical and historical terms.

"Of the many manuals in its field, Jonathan Ott's is by far the best for the layman -- comprehensive in scope, judicious in its warnings, packed with information. Discussion of public policy is sensible. Every legislator and judge, Federal and state, would do well to read Ott on Drugs."-- R. Gordon Wasson

"Hallucinogenic Plants of North America will surely take its place as a book -- and there are far too few of them -- destined never to be outdated simply because it is built of the stuff that thinking man of any period of time needs if he is to be understanding of the past, sympathetic of the present, and inquisitive of the future."-- Richard Evans Schultes